Tag Archives: community

Rating, Voting & Ranking: Designing for Collaboration & Consensus

Abstract

The OpenChoice system, currently in development, is an open source, open access community rating and filtering service that would improve upon the utility of currently available Web content filters. The goal of OpenChoice is to encourage community involvement in making filtering classification more accurate and to increase awareness in the current approaches to content filtering. The design challenge for OpenChoice is to find the best interfaces for encouraging easy participation amongst a community of users, be it for voting, rating or discussing Web page content. This work in progress reviews some initial designs while reviewing best practices and designs from popular Web portals and community sites.

Excerpt

…Tim O’Reilly proposed the phrase “architecture of participation” to describe participatory Web sites and applications that encourage user-driven content, open source contribution models and simple access via APIs. So why are so many of these sites and applications under-designed at the interface and interaction level, not to mention having vaguely architected overall structure? Many of these sites are relying on the (initial) enthusiasm of users or their compelling features to keep and encourage participation. However more attractive and functional interfaces with clear labels, (usability) tested interfaces, finely crafted workflows and consistent interaction models would both keep early adopters involved and allow for easy bootstrapping for late-comers. When designing participatory, community-oriented sites, designers shouldn’t have to re-invent everything from scratch.

…popular community sites feature common interface elements and functionality:

Overall voting and rank status easy to read

Dynamically updated interaction

Thumbnail, abstract or actual content of item on same page as voting interface

Aggregate main page or display element that shows overall community ratings (to encourage virtuous competition for most ratings)

Task flow for voting or rating clear with additional interactions not required (e.g. following links)

…In addition to dynamic voting status, there is some consideration of simplifying the voting to include “allow” vs. “block” ratings only. Design issues such as the colors of the buttons may also overly influence certain votes.

As part of each user’s own customized portal page, a history of recent votes is prototyped to give users the ability to remember their past votes and see the status of pending items in consideration.